One of my winter gardening tasks this year was creating a better organizational system for packets of seeds. In years past, I’ve tossed everything relatively haphazardly into a galvanized tote with very little organization. This year, I picked up a seed storage organizer and gave some order to the madness. In this blog post, I’m sharing how to organize seeds in a way that works best for you, using a seed organizer. I’ll also share the seed organizing method I landed on.
Reasons Why You Need A System For Organizing Seeds
There comes a point in every gardener’s life that an organization system for seeds is necessary. Sure you can get away with throwing everything in shoe boxes for a while. It works for some. But once you have a lot of seed packets, it becomes troublesome.
Find What You’re Looking For Easily
After organizing seeds, it’s much easier to quickly find what you’re looking for. This is especially important in the middle of the growing season when things are coming fast and furious and you’re planting away. A well-organized seed collection means you’ll know when you’re out of bean seeds, so planting isn’t delayed on last-minute seed orders.
Saves Money On Seed Purchases
Do you know what happens when your seed packages are unorganized? You don’t know what you have and you order far too many new seeds. I did this so often. It’s how I have a lifetime’s supply of beet seeds. With organized seeds, you can easily see the leftover seeds for next season. So when the seed catalogs come, you’ll be less likely to overorder. Notice I said “less likely.” I will forever overorder as there’s always a new pepper to try.
Increase Growing Success
Organized seeds also help the gardener increase their growing success. Old seeds don’t last forever (although the “expiration dates” are more like sell-by dates) and the germination rate declines over time. With organized seeds, you’re more likely to use up older seeds first as you can easily see what you have.
Easier To Store Seeds
It’s also easier to store seeds properly, in the best place for you. If you have all your seeds tucked neatly in a storage case or photo album, it’s easier to put that one item away in a place optimized for long-term seed storage. The best way to store seeds is in a way that keeps them cool, dry, and dark.
Protect Them
Proper seed storage helps protect the packets and seeds from damage. If they’re stored and organized in a seed organizer, you can easily keep them out of direct sunlight and at room temperature. Plastic containers also help keep the seeds dry.
Choose A Seed Organization System
Now that we’ve covered the reasons why it’s a good idea to organize your garden seeds, let’s look at the options for how to organize your seed collection within seed organizers. There is no one-size-fits-all option. I’ve tried a number of these methods over the years and each served its purpose in the stage of gardening I was at.
Sort In Alphabetical Order
Sorting and organizing seeds in alphabetical order is a great option if you only have a few types of seeds. Tuck them in an album or a recipe box to store. It’s easy to find a particular seed packet if they’re organized in a container alphabetically.
Sort By Plant Type
Organizing seeds by plant type is another option and is one of the best ways if your seed collection is larger. And by plant type I mean grouping seeds together in categories like roots, beans, tomatoes, brassicas, greens, etc.
Here are some organizational ideas:
- Alliums (onions and shallots)
- Beans (bush and climbing, dry beans, snap beans)
- Brassicas (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kohlrabi, Brussels sprouts)
- Cucurbits (cucumbers, melons, squashes, pumpkins)
- Flowers
- Grasses (corn, wheat, rice, oats)
- Greens (lettuce, spinach, swiss chard, kale, etc.)
- Herbs (basil, oregano, dill, chives, etc.)
- Nightshades (tomatoes, peppers, eggplants)
- Peas (shelling, snap, snow)
- Roots (carrots, parsnips, radishes, beets, rutabagas, turnips)
You don’t have to stick to those main categories. I encourage you to make adjustments for the seeds you have.
For example, I have a ton of cucurbit seeds and they are seeds that take up alot of space. Like pumpkins, cucumbers, winter squashes, summer squashes, zucchinis, melons, and more. Because I have so many, I break them down so each plant in the family has its own category and storage box.
If you have too many seeds in any of these categories, break them down into smaller subcategories. The reverse is also true. If you have just one or two seed packets of a certain plant type, make an “other” category to be a catch-all for the random one-offs you have. Tailor this organizational method to your own seeds and needs.
Sort By Variety
If you have a very large seed collection (it’s me, hi) you may want to break down each plant family and type into narrower variety groupings.
Maybe you have a ton of tomato varieties. Instead of just grouping by the larger “tomato” category, go further and organize by cherry tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes, paste tomatoes, etc. For me, my tomato seeds are sorted into small tomatoes (cherry, pear, currant size), medium/large tomatoes (beefsteaks, slicers, paste), and other tomatoes (tomatillos, ground cherries).
Another example would be if you like a lot of variety in the cabbage family. Maybe you break the varieties up into categories like green cabbage, red cabbage, kohlrabi, small cabbages, large cabbages, early-season cabbage, late-season cabbage, etc. Whatever floats your cabbage-toting boat.
And one last example when it comes to leafy greens. If you have an extensive collection of this plant type, break it down further. Like spinach, swiss chard, kale, arugula, romaine lettuce, iceberg lettuce, butterhead lettuce, salad mixes, collard greens, etc.
The point is, to customize how you sort and organize your seed collection to work for you. Some of us are passionate about certain plants and have a lot of variety within that plant family. Whatever those types are, give them a little more space in your seed organizers and a little more love with how you sort them.
Sort By Planting Season
A great way to set up your seed storage system is by the planting season. I used to do this when my seed collection was smaller and I didn’t have a good seed starting calendar. Sort your seeds by the time of year you need them. It could be as broad as spring sowing, summer sowing, and fall sowing. Although some varieties overlap. Or you can drill down even further like early spring, late spring, etc. I’ve even heard of others who sort by the month or week that they plan to sow the seeds.
Sorting and organizing a seed collection this way works better if you don’t have a lot of seed packs. With a smaller collection, it’s easy to grab your stash of seeds for early spring sowing. Maybe it’s a packet each of peas, radishes, spinach, and kale. Take the pile sorted by season to your garden to sow that first spring bed of yours.
Sort By Sowing Indoors Vs. Outdoors
Along the same lines of sorting seeds by sowing season is sorting by indoor versus outdoor seed starting. This is another method I used earlier on in my gardening endeavors. I had a six-compartment tote and I categorized by sow indoors in February, sow indoors in March, sow indoors in April, direct seed outside before last frost, direct seed outside after last frost, and one last category for herbs and flowers. Within each compartment I had similar plant types grouped. It was a great way to keep my sowing schedule on track.
If you choose to organize your seeds this way, you’ll find you have broad categories of where the seeds are getting started. But it also makes sense to sub-categorize the vegetable seeds within those locations. So grouping all hot peppers together, cabbages together, etc.
Let’s Organize Your Seeds
Now that we’ve covered a few methods for how to organize seeds, let’s go through the process of organizing. The fun part. It’s also good to have the seed organizer you plan on using for seed storage. The organizer sometimes dictates your method of organization.
Gather All The Seeds
First, gather up all of your seeds. And by all the seeds, I mean ALL the seeds.
Bring them to one location. Feel free to take over the dining room table for the day or another flat surface that’s easier to sort and see your entire collection at once.
Sort Them Via Your Preferred Method
Start sorting all of your seeds using your preferred method. Don’t worry about getting your categories perfect yet. Just use a rough framework leaving yourself some room to shift and fine-tune later on.
For example, when I organized my seeds I wanted to sort by plant type. I sorted all my seeds into narrower categories like cucumbers, winter squash, kale, etc. Some seed varieties I had very few of (like fennel and goji berries) but others I had alot of seeds (like tomatoes and peppers). I had chosen to use two plastic photo storage boxes for my collection and noticed I had enough smaller boxes to break peppers and tomatoes into more niche categories.
Place Them In Your Organizer
Once you have your system nailed down and your seeds sorted into their final categories, start loading up your seed organizer. Whether you’re using a photo storage box like I do, a recipe box, a photo album, or whatever you choose. Now is the time to place all of your seeds, properly organized, into their seed storage container.
Add Labels And Dividers Where Needed
This is also a great time to label everything if need be. For me, it made no sense to load up the photo storage box without labeling each container with the contents of the box. I didn’t want to pull out each photo box to see what was in it. I grabbed a very inexpensive label maker and quickly made category labels to help me alphabetize my collection. Labels made it even easier to find the seeds that I was looking for.
How I Organize My Seeds
Last year, my seed organization system looked like this. Except this is a cleaned-up for photos version. Just picture it absolutely overstuffed.
I had my galvanized tote sorted by indoor vs outdoor seed starting and then broken down even further by clipping like varieties together using a binder clip. It worked relatively well except for two things. One, if I wasn’t great about putting things back immediately after using them, the system broke down. And two, kids. The seeds were easily accessible to the children, who often pawed through my seeds not putting them back where they went.
What I liked about the system was I could grab what I needed easily, knew what seeds needed to be started when, and could take my entire collection to my basement seed starting setup or outdoors to direct seed. It was a good seed storage system and it worked for a time. But I finally outgrew it last year. I needed just a little more space to organize my garden seeds.
Seed Organizer
This year, I made a seed storage system that worked better for me, using two of the plastic photo storage boxes from Michael’s Craft Stores. I bought three of the boxes when they were on super sale, about $15 each, at the beginning of the year. One of which I have another project in mind for (or maybe I’ll just use it for flowers even though my flower seed collection isn’t very big).
Within the large photo box are 16 individual photo cases, meaning I could have 16 categories in each box or 32 total categories. I liked that the photo boxes were larger than my seed packets. This was especially helpful since I have lots of different sizes of packets. Some seed packs are bulk and even those fit in the photo boxes. The only category that is tight is winter squash since the seeds are bulkier and I have quite a few varieties.
I opted to create these just for the kitchen garden, vegetables and herbs only. I’m starting to develop quite a collection of flower seeds which I didn’t include in these totes. I may create a separate organizer for flower seeds or maybe just a different system altogether for them. I haven’t decided yet.
Bulk Seeds In Jars
The one problem I ran into was with bean and pea seeds. I have alot of them, especially pea seeds, and both types are very bulky. There just wasn’t room to store them within my own seed organizer. I needed another solution for these seeds.
For the beans, most of the seed packets were for dry beans. Since the seeds for these are mostly on our pantry shelves in mason jars, I put a small number of seeds into glass jars so we know not to eat them before I sow the seeds. Then I just plopped the empty seed packages in the seed storage containers along with the snap bean packets, which I only have a few of and fit nicely in the photo boxes.
With the pea seeds, I just put the two varieties in glass jars and stored them on a shelf until it’s ready to sow them. I also put the empty packets in the storage box because I like having a variety of info on the back of the packets.
How I Use The Organizer During Garden Season
I’m only a few weeks into vegetable garden season and seed starting here and I’m already loving the new organizational system. It was so easy the other day when I was starting all my onion seeds to just grab the individual photo box filled with onion seeds and take it down to my basement seed starting station. I can’t store my seeds down there because it’s far too damp.
I also love that I can take the individual case to the garden. The beauty is, that as long as I close the box, I won’t inadvertently water the seed packs or leave them outside in the rain. Both of which I have done and ruined whole categories of seeds.
At the end of the season, or after I’m done with seed starting certain varieties, I want to tuck post-its or a piece of paper inside the box with notes about what I need for next year. It’s an easy way to keep track of what I need or don’t need without having to open every seed packet. For example, I just started hot pepper seeds and noticed I only had two jalapeno seeds left. I made a quick note to order more on my next seed order.
Find What Works For You
When sorting and organizing your seeds, whether it’s for the upcoming garden season or off-season seed storage, I cannot emphasize enough to create an easy system that works for you. Whether your organizer is a 2-ring binder or individual plastic containers, whether you’re an avid gardener or a beginner, figure out what you need and desire, and make it happen. Find the right size and system for your storage needs.
The right system for how to organize seeds is out there and I hope this blog post helps you along your way. Happy gardening (and seed organizing) everyone!
